Functional grammar analysis in support of dialogic instruction with text: scaffolding purposeful, cumulative dialogue with English learners

Abstract

For children learning English as an additional language, dialogic teaching supports both learning content and learning language. Engaging language learners in dialogue offers special challenges, however. This article describes an instructional approach that focused on engendering purposeful and cumulative talk, supported by metalanguage from functional grammar. The metalanguage enabled pupils’ exploration of an author’s language choices to examine how the feelings of a character in a story are presented. Records of talk were captured in writing to serve as resources for fostering further talk and to support pupils in a final written task that responded to a key question in focus throughout. We illustrate the dialogic engagement with and about text, supported by a focus on language choices, that, in turn, supported the kind of collaborative talk that is often hard to achieve with language learners.

Keywords:

• Functional grammar
•  metalanguage
•  dialogic instruction
•  English learners
•  cumulative learning

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Rachel Rennie Klingelhofer is a lecturer and research assistant in the School of Education at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her teaching and research interests focus on literacy instruction at the elementary level.

Mary Schleppegrell is a professor of education in the School of Education at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her research is focused on the role of language in education, particular for students learning English as an additional language. She is the author of The Language of Schooling (Routledge) and has recently co-authored the book Focus on Grammar and Meaning (Oxford) with Luciana de Oliveira.